As of: March 8, 2024, 6:47 a.m
By: Jonas Napiletzki
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Start: Before the start of the approximately six-week data collection, forestry district manager Gerhard Waas (from 2nd from left) and Stefan Kramer, forestry department head at AELF, explain the process using an example in Fischbachau.
© Jonas Napiletzki
The forestry districts have a huge effort ahead of them: this year they are documenting browsing in the forest using a meter stick and tablet - across the board and according to exact criteria.
Fischbachau
- It's a job for the patient that follows a strictly statistical procedure: bend over, measure and enter the result into the tablet.
Hundreds of times in a row, in hundreds of places in the district.
Gerhard Waas is in no hurry; the district manager takes his time with countless plants.
Is the rejuvenation dogged?
What is the extent of the damage?
And which shoots are affected?
“You can also use it to look into the past,” explains Waas.
This is important because the admission process in this complex form is only carried out every three years.
In this cycle, the Offices for Food, Agriculture and Forestry (AELF) throughout Bavaria prepare “forestry reports on the situation of forest regeneration” based on the data.
This year it's that time again, the 14th report since the start in 1986 is due.
At the start, Waas shows the process together with Stefan Kramer, head of the forestry department at AELF Holzkirchen.
As usual, Kramer invited landowners and forest and hunting representatives to the forest above Faistenau near Fischbachau.
The procedure should be transparent for everyone involved - after all, the report will later form the most important basis for the shooting planning for 2025. A statistical procedure is important in order not to give the impression that you are simply looking for something to bite, explains Kramer.
“Of course we won’t do that.”
Four conservancy communities in the district
Rather, the measuring points are set at certain intervals according to a grid.
Across Bavaria, the forests are divided into 750 conservancy communities, four of which are in the district: three small game conservancies and one large game conservancy community.
The latter, which also includes the forest near Faistenau, has 80 measuring points that are at least five meters deep in the forest.
From each of these points, the district managers - supported by external forces - record a straight route of up to 100 meters that leads through the nearest taper.
Within six weeks, browsing by game on young trees should be statistically recorded at one point per 150 hectares without specifically searching for them.
Landowners and hunters should take advantage of the opportunity and go along, appeals conservancy leader Bernhard Greinsberger.
Technology: The data is transferred from the tablet to Freising in real time.
© Jonas Napiletzki
The data, Kramer adds, is collected by the Bavarian State Institute for Forestry and Forestry (LWF) in Freising and later sent back to Holzkirchen, from where the AELF can make comparisons and derive trends.
Kramer is already revealing: “The browsing in the big game conservancy community is worrying us.”
Goal: 40 percent fir trees
This is also confirmed by Waas, head of the Upper Schlierach and Leitzachtal forest district.
“The spruces are still smaller than the firs,” he says.
But if the young trees are bitten and held back, this turns around.
“This is fatal because the spruce is not climate-stable,” emphasizes the district manager.
The aim is to have a proportion of 40 percent fir and hardwood and ten percent spruce - but the forest is still a long way from that.
However, Waas can see from larger fir trees that browsing pressure was apparently lower here in the past.
The forest report shows precisely these long-term observations.
And that, emphasizes Kramer, “is more relevant than ever before.”
February was the warmest month since records began, and data collection started earlier than ever.
Kramer warns: “All it takes is one dry summer, then the bark beetles will run rampant here too.” The forests need to be converted – and the report is becoming increasingly important for this.
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